


Make crosses from your lovers, throw roses in the rain

by Ashura



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Bittersweet, M/M, Memories, Romance, Valentine's Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-15
Updated: 2011-02-15
Packaged: 2017-10-15 16:43:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/162811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ashura/pseuds/Ashura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One Valentine's day: looking back, and looking forward. For the K/S Valentine festival 2011.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Make crosses from your lovers, throw roses in the rain

The first time Jim Kirk made a big deal about Valentine’s Day, he was sixteen. He’d started going out with Cassie Clarke at midnight on New Year’s Day, and she was beautiful and he was going to do this whole thing right. He took her to the nicest place he could afford—an Italian dive in the middle of town with a lot of dark secluded corners and a liberal attitude toward the drinking age that he was pretty sure was run by the mob. If there was a mob in the middle of Iowa, but it made a good story. They got tipsy on Asti and she laughed when he kissed pasta sauce off her cheek. They shared some chocolate death sundae afterward and made out in the car in the school parking lot. It went pretty well, all in all, except that they’d broken up by St. Patrick’s Day.

That kind of set the tone for Valentine’s Day from there on out, for Jim. He was so good at being romantic, when he wanted to be. He could do the whole flowers and chocolates thing, say the right stuff, pick the right dates. Hell, he could even rattle off some Shakespeare or something when it suited his purposes. But the relationships never lasted. None of his relationships ever lasted, and that was pretty much his own fault, but still. There was the year he took Michelle Davis to the ballet, where she ran into her ex and they got back together the following week; the year he and Lizzy Chad got high and her parents caught them; the year he set up a double thing as a goodwill gesture and ended up nursing Bones out of his beer all night. As holidays went, it wasn’t one he was all that attached to.

But it was good for morale to celebrate pretty much any holiday that wasn’t likely to actually kill anybody, so he signed off on a lot of pink frosted cupcakes for the crew and sanctioned a few games and Valentine’s exchanges, That was two weeks before it actually happened, though, and he figured he’d think about something to do for Spock later. And then there was the thing with the Saurian traders and the thing with the lost Klingons, and he didn’t have time. And then it was upon him, and he had nothing planned.

* * *

The plans for the Vulcan colony were going smoothly—far more smoothly than the Vulcan elder now calling himself Savesh had allowed himself to expect. Over a century of experience with the beauracracies of both Starfleet and Vulcan had made him cynical; heartbreak had made him tired. It had been a tedious day, meeting after meeting, and it was with considerable relief that he left the Presidio to make his way toward the bay.

“Sir?” A cadet on security duty, looking awkward. They were all young and green after nearly all the preceding class had been demolished by Nero. The ones making their way through the Academy now were good souls, but children still. They were uncomfortable with age and with pain, and the Vulcans embodied them both. “Can I call you a driver, sir?”

Savesh shook his head. “No, thank you, Cadet. I prefer to walk.” The air was crisp, still winter but fresh with the promise of oncoming spring; the wind rolled in waves of salt from the water. Someone had twisted pink and red streamers around a lamppost at the entrance. Valentine’s Day? He hadn’t realised. Not that he had any need to. It had been a very long time indeed since he had occasion to remember.

* * *

The ambassador from Rayaeth and the President of Altair Gamma hadn’t been out of the room a full minute before Jim let his head fall to bang against the table. “Somebody please just kill me now.”

“Tempting,” Uhura said, though her expression held more sympathy than her voice, “but if I have to suffer through this nightmare of a negotiation, so do you.”

“What’s left to negotiate?” Jim threw up his hands. “I’m beginning to really understand the merit of gunboat diplomacy.”

“For what it’s worth,” Uhura said, “you’re doing pretty well.” She sighed. “I know, okay? I want to get this over with too. If nothing else, before all the cupcakes are gone.”

Jim thumped his head against the table again. “Right, I lost track. Valentine’s Day. We not only have to negotiate with the two most stubborn entities in the entire quadrant—possibly the entire universe—but we’re missing _cake_.”

“Awww.” He couldn’t actually tell if she was mocking or not. Probably safe to assume she was. “It’s a valiant sacrifice you’re making, Captain.” There, that cinched it. Definitely mocking.

He could deal with that. He shot her a grin. “Yeah, I know. I’m noble that way. What about you? Missing something special?”

She looked away for a moment, and he thought, _got you_. But she shook her head. “Nothing that won’t keep till we get out of this. You know Scotty. He’ll be just as happy with the warp core as with me.”

Jim laughed. “Well, _Enterprise_ is his true love.”

“Yeah, I know,” she said ruefully. “I’ve come to terms with it. What about you? Big romantic plans?”

He shook his head out of reflex, even though Uhura was one of the few people who knew about this weird...whatever it was going on with Spock. “No. I was going to plan something to surprise him with, but...” He shrugged helplessly, and Uhura nodded in understanding. Sometimes their job was a lot of flying through space doing nothing at all, and other times everything happened at once.

The door opened, and Yeoman Rand led the president and the ambassador back into the room. They both looked downcast, like sheepish children. Jim kind of wondered what she’d said to them.

“Well, gentlemen,” he said, gesturing them back to their chairs, “shall we get back to business?”

* * *

Savesh, who still had trouble sometimes remembering that was now his name, lived in a quiet apartment several floors above a yoga studio. He had been told repeatedly by various members of Starfleet Command that this was not necessary, that he was in fact entitled to a grander living arrangement. But this suited him, and what else did he require? He was one old man, living alone and keeping to himself; to use more than he had need of was illogical.

Besides, it had a certain sentimental attachment, and he was no longer opposed to indulging the occasional emotion. He was, after all, half human. From the wide floor-length windows in the living room he could look out over a particular patch of Golden Gate Park where once, in the long distant past, a desperate crew had landed a Klingon Bird of Prey and a certain Vulcan science officer had rediscovered his place amongst his crewmates and friends. He sat at the window in meditation, and told himself that if this was the only home he had left, it was logical to find a place he could feel connected to his past.

He made his way up the stairs. That was a kind of meditation by itself, the slow, methodical, step by step journey like walking a labyrinth. There was an elevator, but he didn’t bother with it. (He had once overheard one of the younger men explaining this to a guest when he walked by—“Oh, the old Vulcan dude? He’s like a hundred and fifty or something and always takes the stairs. I so want to be that kick-ass when I’m old.” Savesh thought it would be illogical to allow this remark to satisfy him.)

He let himself in. The apartment was sparsely furnished, but that too was logical, if not actually by choice. His home on Vulcan and even, long ago, his quarters on the _Enterprise_ had at least had touches of home, but remnants of Vulcan were now few and far between. They had escaped with their lives, but had no time for treasures. And he himself had only what he had carried with him on the _Jellyfish_ ; his personal talismans had been limited to a hologramme locket Jim had given him for a long-ago birthday. The Starfleet insignia had graced its cover once, but over the years his fingers had worn it smooth.

It now sat on a small table near the window, between a pair of meditation candles and a small statuette of an old Earth prophet that someone had given him when he arrived. He could see it now, pillowed on a bit of dark red cloth. After a moment he lifted it in one hand, then lit the candles and sank to the floor, his eyes closed, to let his mind clear.

* * *

By the time the negotiations were over—and not solved, oh no, not by a long way, but at least at the point where everyone involved was exhausted enough to agree to call it a night even if they were apparently genetically programmed not to agree on anything else—Jim had no hope left of any kind of even half-hearted Valentine’s surprise for Spock. He barely had any hope of getting himself something to eat before he crashed. Not that he figured Spock was going to worry about it—Valentine’s Day, after all, was illogical enough that not even all the humans celebrated it, and he was pretty sure it wasn’t even in the Vulcan vocabulary. During another break in the proceedings, Uhura had basically confirmed this for him by explaining the first year she’d been with him and tried to plan something special. He’d been frustrated by lack of knowledge of the social convention and confused at why there was a social convention at all, and it hadn’t been satisfying for anybody. Jim figured considering how today had already gone, that was for the best.

Which is why he was a bit surprised, to say the least, when he opened the door to his quarters to see Spock waiting at his worktable with a pot of bright red flowers nearly as tall as his head.

“Um,” Jim said eloquently. “Hi.”

“Hello, Jim,” Spock said, rising from his chair and looking rather expectant. “I trust the negotiations between Rayaeth and Altair Gamma were successful?”

Jim snorted. “You assume wrong. But it’s over for tonight. What’s...?” He let himself fade off, because he wasn’t sure what he was asking. Maybe ‘why is there a giant tropical plant on my desk’, but also maybe ‘how are you so amazing’, and neither one quite seemed like what he wanted to say.

“I understand,” Spock said, in this way that Jim was just starting to catch on meant he was kind of uncomfortable, “that the accepted social convention of the day is to use gifts such as sweets and cut foliage to express affection for one’s chosen partner. As I am conscious of my limited capacity for expressing this other ways, I...wished to participate.”

Jim blinked at him. All that slowly sunk in, and somewhere by the end of it doing so, Jim had crossed the room, wrapped his arms around Spock’s neck, and kissed him hard.

It was electric, every time they did that. Spock’s arms went around his back, hesitant for the briefest moment before tightening, crushing Jim against him. They staggered backward toward the bed, grasping and tugging at their clothes and shedding them as they went. As Jim tumbled onto his back, Spock pulled away, braced himself on one hand.

Jim reached for him. “What is it, baby?”

The endearment always made Spock blush a little green, but he didn’t claim it bothered him, and that was a pretty ringing endorsement as far as Jim was concerned. “I had acquired sweets,” he said tentatively. “From the ones passed out among the crew. I thought they were an appropriate addition to the flowers.”

He was so sweet sometimes Jim could just melt. “It’s okay,” he promises. “We’ll get to the sweets.” He grinned. “Believe me, when we’re done here, I’m going to need the sugar.”

“This is all...acceptable?” Spock asked, and Jim wondered if he was remembering the same disastrous thing with Uhura that she’d talked about. He curled his fingers around Spock’s hand and brought it to his lips.

“Way more than acceptable” he promised. And then he grinned. “And I didn’t have a chance to get any surprises for you, so I promise you’re going to reap the benefits of that guilt for at least the next half hour.” He pulled Spock down toward him and kissed him. Jim could be really, _really_ convincing.

* * *

“It’s Valentine’s Day, Spock. For showing the important people in our lives that we love them.” There had been a kind of frustrated patience in Kirk’s voice at the time that Spock would become used to. Even now he could hear the cadence of it in his head. It made it hard to remember he was no longer Spock, even though it should have been easy. The trappings of his old life had gone, and there was no reason for him to be Spock, now. There was a Spock already, who was in his proper place for the universe, serving on the _Enterprise_ under James T. Kirk. But having abandoned both his former life and his former name did not mean he had forgotten it.

“It is illogical,” he had told Kirk that one Valentine’s Day, long ago, “to set aside a single day for such a purpose. Surely something of such import to humans should be expressed every day, rather than once a year?”

Kirk gave him that look that said as clear as words, _Sometimes I don’t know what to do with you_ and laughed. “Fair enough, but we still like to have a day to celebrate it.”

“A festival based on the gruesome execution of a historical figure seems a poor choice,” Spock had said, disgruntled, but then Kirk was touching him, and he encountered some difficulty maintaining disinterest.

And Kirk didn’t seem to mind, anyway. “You know us illogical humans,” he said fondly. Illogical human. The words were as close as they got in those days to _I love you_. Spock had repeated them several times that night.

Kirk had liked holidays and liked sharing them with Spock, and he’d kept up his mission of converting Spock to Valentine’s Day for years afterward. The worst had been just after Genesis, after Spock’s katra had been returned to his body. He’d had trouble remembering, and even more trouble accepting, and rejected Kirk’s attempts to “catch up,” as he called it. The stung look on Kirk’s face had haunted him in ways he hadn’t understood at the time, and the following year he’d been the one to initiate a celebration of the holiday.

“I thought you were of the opinion this holiday was illogical,” Kirk had said, and there’d been hope in his eyes that Spock could hardly stand to see.

“I was,” Spock had confessed, “but I think I have come to see its merit.”

“I’ve been trying to get you to see that for _years_ ,” Kirk said.

Savesh, who here in the sanctuary of his own home and his own mind could let himself be Spock again, kept his eyes closed, his fingers stroking over the worn surface of the holoprojector like a rosary. He had listened to it more times than he could count. He knew the words by heart.

But it was Kirk’s voice, and the only way he would ever hear those words, said in that way, again. _Your destiny is to be by my side._

Spock opened his eyes. The sky outside had darkened, the floodlights illuminating the park below and drowning out the stars. He turned his face up to them anyway.

“Yes, _t’hy’la_ ,” he said quietly. Somewhere in the far distance, the legacy was being carried on. He had faith that they would find each other; perhaps they already had. “Yes, it is indeed.”

\--


End file.
